DAI and SONSBEEK'16: transACTION warmly invite you to Roaming Assembly#6

intraACTION: transCOLONIALISM

a symposium convened and moderated by

Mirwan Andan (ruangrupa, curator SONSBEEK ’16: transACTION) &

Hypatia Vourloumis (guest-curator DAI).

Assembling in artist Richard Bell’s Aboriginal Embassy – (“Aboriginal Art – It’s a White Thing”) we will ask:“How do colonial histories matter to the urgencies and conditions of our current world? How have those histories so often been rendered as leftovers, as "legacies" of a dead past rather than as active and violating forces in the world today?” (Stoler, 2016)

Interdisciplinary guest speakers and performers (who are new emerging contemporary artists, musicians, university based scholars, curators and cultural activists, researchers and writers) from around the globe, will all address the theme in their own unique ways:

ROAMING ASSEMBLY: a recurring public symposium scheduled to take place once a month (always on a Sunday afternoon, always convivial), functioning as it were as the DAI-week's 'centerfold'.

Although closely interlinked with the DAI's academic activities, the editions of this state-of-the-art speculative and hybrid program are not conceived as plain extensions of the regular DAI-seminars, but rather envisioned as sovereign happenings (for which we like to team up with friends), aiming to mobilize our bodies, our intelligences.

After the event, around 20:00, a dinner (prepared by vegan chef Mari Pitkänen and her team) will be served in another tent (placed in the so-called Steile Tuin) in Park Sonsbeek. Costs for Roaming Assembly visitors: € 10 for food & wine. If you would like to join us for the dinner you need to make a reservation at dutchartinstitute@artez.nl (please note that seating is limited~closing date May 28, 2016).

Program

Introduction

Through the time and space, matters and meanings reconfigured in our gathering, this sixth roaming assembly will intra-act with and from within the current edition of Sonsbeek art festival located in Arnhem, curated by Indonesian Jakarta-based art collective ruangrupa. Their curatorial notion, theme and practices of “trans-action” converse here with Karen Barad’s notion of “intra-action” (beings, actions, entities do not exist before/outside relation) and generates a neologism such as “trans-colonialism” as a way to think through the entanglement that is colonialism and coloniality; entanglements of ongoing duress and performativity of measurement, culture, meaning but also of matter, “ghostly matters,” in Avery Gordon’s words, or, “imperial debris and durabilities” in Ann Laura Stoler’s.

Assembling in artist Richard Bell’s Aboriginal Embassy – (“Aboriginal Art – It’s a White Thing”) we will ask: “How do colonial histories matter to the urgencies and conditions of our current world? How have those histories so often been rendered as leftovers, as "legacies" of a dead past rather than as active and violating forces in the world today?” (Stoler 2016).

We will think why and how coloniality matters as matter in the present, the relationship between meaning and materiality, why “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (Audre Lorde), and the practice and potentiality of new materialisms and agencies: the art of invention in existence and the invention of existence as art. READ THE FULL CURATORIAL INTRODUCTION HERE

2.00 - 2:10

The Double Track of Colonialism

Rahman and Maulida come from two different generations, one from 1960s and one from late 1980s. They discussed about the colonialism based on their experiences of the daily life in Indonesia that deeply touch the social, political, economical and historical issues in wide context. The discussion then is transcripted and translated by Maulida Raviola. Colonial legacy, national identity, and gap of generations are the keywords during their conversation.

QUILOMBO!

Colonialism is not a phenomenon confined to the historical past, but a mark of contemporaneity. This presentation will focus on thinking and understanding how we can perceive the legacies and permanencies of colonialism in everyday life. Through an image archive of Latin American cultures we will observe the remains in gestures, popular expressions, statistics and social divisions incorporated and absorbed by these cultures. This is a critical exercise to note the continued presence of the historical past in political, social and economic relations.

2.30 - 3:30 (including discussion & coffee break)

Epistemic Disobedience in Dutch (Post)Colonialism

This talk will address forms of epistemic disobedience in both colonial Indonesia and the postcolonial Netherlands. Paul Bijl will work with Jacques Rancière’s notion of dissensus: the putting together of two worlds in one and the same world which creates an opening for equality. Indonesian authors Kartini, Soerjaningrat and Sjahrir, in the first decades of the twentieth century, as well as the contemporary Moroccan-Dutch rapper Salah Edin and Surinamese-Dutch women wearing headscarves named ‘angisas’ use writing and performance to imagine different worlds which are at odds with the world they live in. Of particularly interest are their critiques of racism and sexism and their implicit and explicit pleas for equal rights and citizenship. At the same time, the marginality of this knowledge on their knowledge begs the question as to the lack of diversity in the Dutch university curriculum and university faculty.

3:30 - 4:00

An intervention toward an intervention: what's wrong with the others?

The effort of colonialists to intervene, to dominate and to create standards based on their own interests has created senses of inferiority and superiority at one and the same time. In this experimental multimedia performance, Bombo will try to express something which is very abstract: red is not green, and black is not both of them. The presentation will use overhead video projecting various comments on colonialism.

4:00 - 4:45 (including discussion & coffee break)

Wave of LGBT - phobia and State Straightism

"I was thinking constantly during the wave of LGBT-phobic and heterosexist statements from state actors, politicians, leaders of faith-based organizations in Indonesia in the first three months or so of this year. I have also been inspired in a conversation with Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch on the 1965-66 massacre and other atrocities against communist and other leftist elements in Indonesia, and from reading Joshua Oppenheimer’s letter to the Guardian linking the atrocities to the opening of Indonesia to rapacious capitalist exploitation, which impacts on climate change even to the global level. I have come to the conclusion that I have seen the worst of Indonesian state and society, and that unless we integrate and intersect the struggle for LGBTI rights with the struggle to build a more just and equal Indonesia, we will not triumph at the end".

The Composition of Movements to Come

How does the avant-garde create spaces in everyday life that subvert regimes of economic and political control? How do art, aesthetics and activism inform one another? And how do strategic spaces of creativity become the basis for new forms of production and governance? Stevphen Shukaitis' presentation (and book of the same title) The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics & Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde reconsiders the history and the practices of the avant-garde, from the Situationists to the Art Strike, revolutionary Constructivism to Laibach and Neue Slowenische Kunst, through an autonomist Marxist framework. READ MORE

Note: Stevphen will be in conversation with rough americana / R.A. (Morgan Craft & Mutamassik aka Giulia Loli): " R.A. is dedicated to a new, urgent, improvisational & functional music existing wholly in the 21st ct while embracing all that has come before (umpth to 1st generational). Craft's 'AfroAmerican'-Viking futurism and Mutamassik's Italicized-Egyptian roots draw bridges between MEMPHIS, USA and MEMPHIS, AFRICA........picking up frequencies from Unseen Forces.

5:55 - 6:15

Contact as Passage and Transaction beyond Contract

"Can we define the line between parasite and guest in a situation of numpang ? What is numpang ? A friend of mine has always been living in a communal house for his whole life. Once he lived and took care of a headquarter of an artist-run space in the South of Yogyakarta. He didn’t pay the rent but he took a great deal of care of the house. He’s numpang in the artist-run space headquarter in which he’s also a member. 'Numpang' is taking a shelter, living in a place which “belongs” to someone else. On a daily basis, this friend of mine will clean the house, repair some broken things, make the house comfortable for other members when they come to visit. The house functions as a co-workshop for artists to produce silk-screen or linocuts pieces. It is also the place for them to drink and hangout". READ MORE

6:15 - 6:50 ( including break for drinks)

Victoria's House

This is an autobiographical story about a woman who returns to her country to visit the haunted house of her dead grandmother. It is a work in progress, part of Intan Paramaditha's upcoming novel about travel and displacement (to be published in 2017).

6.50 - 7:30

Final discussion

Between all the participants and the audience. Moderated by the curators.